


sigh, try, hard enough to die

by tigerlo



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alot of angst, Angst, F/F, never fear, so maybe read with caution if you need to steer clear of topics like that, there's a big old happy ending though, this is quite a dark fic stuck in poor Waverly's slightly tormented post 2x12 head, with a bit of smut in the middle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:30:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlo/pseuds/tigerlo
Summary: Post 2x12.The darkness has left the others, but it only settlesheavieragainst Waverly’s skin.





	sigh, try, hard enough to die

**Author's Note:**

> So, this came as a result of a little runaway idea that popped into my head earlier in the week while I was busy writing my wild-west au, and @iamthegaysmurf encouraged me (and also beta-d it for me because she is a _champ_ ) to run with it, rather than write a bit and bank it for later, so I have her to thank for the sprinkle of encouragement. 
> 
> I've tagged this as being dark, and it _is_ , so if that's not your thing, you might want to steer clear. It's not dark in the way Waverly's nightmare fic was, this is different, it's introspective angst for the most part, rather than external angst, although before long it begins to affect the external, too. 
> 
> I hope you do enjoy it for what it is though, it was a refreshing little piece to work on. 
> 
> x

-

  
  


Waverly isn’t the same girl everyone thinks she is. 

 

People on the outside think she’s light and kindness, and she  _ is _ those things, but she has a darkness in her, too. 

 

And it’s  _ more _ present now,  _ more _ pronounced as the weight lifts off everyone else’s shoulders following the events of the last few months, settling heavier on hers. 

 

Months for her that are made of and woven with possession and suffocation and kissing other people and hidden marriages and lineages that don’t belong to her anymore. 

 

Everyone else breathes, and Waverly  _ suffocates _ . 

 

She wants to pretend like the shadow, the black snapping at her wrists, is new, but actually, in some small amount, this darkness, it’s  _ always _ been there. 

 

It’s always been there, tempered with the light, and if she’s truthful with herself, she’s always known it meant something, she just didn’t know what. 

 

She wonders now if it’s been a clue to her parentage all along, this constant feeling of unease as the light battles the dark within her. Because she’s never felt like an Earp, not totally, and she wonders if the lack of solidity in her blood has been trying to tell her that for years. 

 

And it’s simple to say that. It’s simple to act like it doesn’t bother her that she’s  _ not _ , that she’ll deal with whatever that means, that she can shrug it off with a smile and a sigh, but actually, the fact that she’s not, it  _ burns _ . 

 

Because if she’s not an Earp, if she’s not really Wynonna’s sister, then who the  _ hell _ is she. 

  
  


-

  
  


Sometimes Waverly sees ghosts.

 

Not real ones, mind. Well, not  _ only _ real ones. 

 

Her mother. 

 

Her father. 

 

Her sister.  _ Both _ of them. The living and the dead.

 

Constance. Bobo. Mattie. 

 

_ Shae _ .

 

Shae is a different kind of ghost, but she haunts Waverly all the same. 

 

Because Shae represents something. She represents the parts of Nicole that Waverly doesn’t know. She represents the parts of Nicole that Waverly can’t compare to. 

 

She  _ knows _ that Nicole loves her. She knows that Nicole loves her more than her own life, more than the lives of anyone else in this whole damn town, and still, Waverly can feel so woefully insignificant in the face of someone like Shae. 

 

Shae, who is beautiful. Shae, who is intelligent, who’s a doctor, who’s accomplished and traveled and all these things that Waverly is  _ not _ . That Waverly may some day be, but she might  _ not, _ as well. 

 

And she knows Nicole loves her, but sometimes she can’t help but think that, in the face of Nicole’s  _ before _ , all that she’s doing with Waverly, small town, not-an-Earp-Waverly, is  _ settling _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


Shae comes to her in dreams sometimes, she walks to Waverly in a cold field in the middle of a winter dawn, and she tells Waverly that she’s  _ enough _ . 

 

That Nicole doesn’t  _ need _ someone who’s seen the world. 

 

That Nicole doesn’t  _ need _ someone who knows who she is. 

 

That Nicole doesn’t  _ need _ someone who’s dreams don’t taunt her like someone who should be in a small padded cell that held Bobo captive in the future that was almost  _ the _ future. 

 

That Waverly  _ will do.  _

 

For now. 

  
  


-

  
  


Waverly’s never been a jealous person, but there are spots of it starting to bleed into her mind, somehow, after Mikshun. 

 

It brought the darkness that echoed and vibrated and  _ grew _ against the dark already inside her, fostered it and nurtured it, and while it has long since been exorcised, it leaves darkness in its place. 

 

A darkness that gives her a deeper facet to her emotions. 

 

Like jealousy. 

 

She doesn't get jealous, not really. 

 

Or she didn’t  _ use _ to. 

 

But sometimes... sometimes it’s  _ hard _ . 

 

Because she’s surrounded by people with skills that outstrip her own. 

 

Wynonna is strong and capable and unwavering. She’s a hero, as much as she’ll never admit to herself or anyone else. She saves people. She helps people. She’s the  _ Heir _ . 

 

Sometimes, Waverly feels inept in comparison. 

 

Willa was worse. 

 

Willa didn’t make her feel inept, she made her feel  _ weak _ . 

 

Small and useless and a waste of space and air and blood. Even as a child. 

 

Sometimes, she gets a flutter of it with Nicole, of feeling like she’s only a burden, not a person who can help, not with the same strength Nicole can, not on her own anyway. Because she’s proven herself at Wynonna’s side, and Nicole’s, too. 

 

But by herself, she’s nothing. Little and weak and human. At least for now. 

 

She knows Nicole is different, though, that she’s special, because that feeling of incompetence, it never  _ settles _ around Nicole the same way it does with others, because Nicole has taken her as her equal in every way possible, in a form that no one else has ever been able to match. 

 

And that, in the quiet spaces of the day and night when she’s drowning, eases the hands from her throat for small minutes so she can  _ breathe _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


She would die for Nicole. 

 

Without so much of a second’s doubt, she would die for her. 

 

Because she loves Nicole more than she has ever loved anything in her entire life. More than her mother and more than her father, more than Gus or Curtis, and more than Wynonna, even. 

 

Nicole is her life and Nicole is her heart and Nicole is her  _ everything _ . 

 

She’s  _ never _ been as scared as she had been when Nicole was writhing in that hospital bed, and she’ll never tell anyone, not Nicole or Wynonna or Doc, that if the price the Iron Witch asked was her life for Nicole’s, she would have paid it willingly. 

 

Because Nicole is good and kind and she’ll make a difference for people in a way that Waverly will never be able to. 

 

So, if fate seems fit to make Waverly choose life for just one, she’ll choose it for Nicole every  _ single _ time 

  
  


-

  
  


Nicole is attentive and Nicole is perfect, and she knows when the shadows linger overlong across Waverly’s body, so she bends her head and her soul and she  _ helps _ . 

 

Always, she likes Nicole to lead, but sometimes, she wants to direct.

 

She whispers in the dark. 

 

“What do you need baby?”

 

_ As the shadows creep up the walls, halted by Nicole’s words.  _

 

“Tell me what you  _ need _ .”

 

“You,” Waverly breathes back as her hands curl around Nicole's shoulders in the night. “I need you. I need you to push me. Make me feel, Nicole. I need you to make me  _ feel _ .”

  
  


-

  
  


Waverly is innocent in the day, but at night she lets the darkness out, she shows Nicole, and  _ only _ Nicole, a different part of her. 

 

Because Nicole can take it, this angle of her, Nicole is not afraid of it because she knows Waverly needs to express it to ease the creak of her lungs. 

 

She knows Nicole worries sometimes, when the shadow settles darker across her skin, but she never runs. She never leaves. 

 

And for her, for Waverly, to have Nicole there to help bleed out the poison, it saves her life. She  _ knows _ it does. 

 

Nicole’s hands curl in her hair and pull just a little bit tight, and Waverly’s breath catches before the exhale falls free. Her fingers curl beautifully around Waverly’s wrists as she holds them down against her bed — _ their _ bed— and it restarts Waverly’s heart. 

 

Nicole helps, in the dark and in the dawn, she helps. Waverly  _ knows _ she does. 

  
  


-

  
  


The thing that’s hardest to reconcile sometimes is that the darkness in her, it’s not something else anymore. It’s not Mikshun, or another demon, or anything inorganic; it’s  _ her _ . 

 

_ Just _ her. 

 

She sees the darkness sometimes, in her mind’s eye, and it looks like her. 

 

She looks different,  _ darker _ , with a hooded eye and black nails that scratch at her own throat, but it’s unmistakably, undeniably  _ her _ . 

 

It’s almost worse that she looks like Waverly, that they’re the same, because she slides up to Nicole in Waverly’s dreams, the dark version of her. She wraps her hands around Nicole’s biceps and pulls Nicole towards her and down onto her bed and there’s nothing Waverly can do but  _ watch _ . 

 

(And damn her if it isn’t one of the hottest things Waverly has ever seen in her life.)

  
  


-

  
  


The weight is there in the day and during the night, always, it’s there like an aura hanging from her fingertips. 

 

Ever-present and there. 

 

It’s there, but she can feel it  _ lifting _ the more time she spends around Nicole, can feel the other version of herself weaken, too. 

 

It lessens and lessens, an inch for every night they share the same pillow, and sometimes Waverly thinks she can see a pale white future where there’s nothing but  _ good _ , and she knows she can make it to the end, with her hand in Nicole’s and their heartbeats falling into sync, she  _ knows _ she can make it there. 

 

One night she dreams of a house untainted by darkness, and the next the black is so heavy she can’t breathe, reminding Waverly that she’s not free. 

 

Not yet. 

 

She’s found a way to gasp around the edges of the weight on her chest, though. She’s not proud of it, but she has. 

 

It’s simple, really. Animalistic, even. 

 

Flesh. 

 

The darkness in her loves flesh, Waverly knows it does. So when she feels like she can’t control it a second longer, she gives in and appeases the side of her that speaks in skin and sharp teeth and nail lines down the inside of Nicole’s thighs. 

 

With her pounding heart, she  _ feeds _ it. 

  
  


-

  
  


She’s so careful during times like that to assure Nicole that she’s still in control, that she’s still here. That she’s still  _ Nicole’s _ Waverly, and not one that belongs to the darknesses. 

 

Nicole  _ knows _ , she tells Waverly that she knows with the small kisses she plants along Waverly’s chest before she sets her teeth to work, nipping sharper at the swell of her breast. 

 

Nicole  _ knows _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


The dark part of herself makes Waverly bold. It gives her the courage to do things she’s never done before. 

 

She’s no wilting flower, never has been, even at the beginning of their relationship, completely new to having the female body in her bed that is not her own, she’s never been shy. 

 

She’s always asked for more, harder,  _ faster, Nicole, faster. _

 

But this is different. This gives her a constitution made of lead. It encourages things that even she has only ever been able to blush about. 

 

To touch herself in front of a lover. To make Nicole  _ watch _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


The first time she does, she’s sitting on Nicole’s lap in their bed. 

 

They’re above the covers and Nicole is bare but for her underwear, and Waverly is, too, with most of their clothes in a puddle around them and on the floor at the foot of the bed.  

 

Nicole’s teasing her. She’s pressing fleeting kisses with no substance across her body, around the more sensitive parts of her breasts, littering her chest with heart shaped bruises made by her lips, and it’s driving Waverly crazy. 

 

Loathe to be beaten, sick of the torment, and eager to give Nicole a taste of her own medicine, Waverly offers up the hottest smirk she can before she slides her hand down her stomach and sets them both on fire. 

 

“What are you doing?” Nicole asks with a shaky voice as she watches Waverly’s hand stop at the edge of her underwear, before Waverly bites her lip and  _ sinks lower. _ “Baby, what are you….?”

 

Her hands tighten on Waverly’s hips when Waverly meets her own wetness, they sink into the skin at Waverly’s small gasp, and Waverly feels Nicole’s breathing  _ stop _ when she watches Waverly’s hand start to move in slow consistent circles. 

 

“ _ Waverly _ ,” Nicole says a little firmer when Waverly doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t give Nicole the satisfaction of an answer. 

 

Not yet. 

 

She just tips her head back instead and makes a measured and concentrated effort to skirt over her own clit to make her body jump further into Nicole’s arms.

 

She opens her eyes at the sound of Nicole moaning at her. Nicole is moaning at her, and  _ for _ her, so she gives, just a little bit. 

 

“You were teasing,” Waverly says casually, as though that much should be obvious to Nicole. “You were teasing and I needed something. I  _ needed _ something, Nicole.”

 

“But, I can….” Nicole falters, and Waverly can see her biting back the desire to move on Waverly, hard and fast, to  _ take _ her, but Waverly can see she’s torn, too, because she wants to  _ watch _ . 

 

“I know you can,” Waverly breathes as her fingers find the source of heat and dip  _ just _ in. “And you  _ will _ , I’ll  _ beg _ you to, but don’t you want to watch, first?”

 

“Yes,” Nicole moans in response. “Yes, show me, baby,  _ please _ .”

 

It’s all the encouragement Waverly needs, to know that Nicole is watching every inch of her skin as she draws moans from her own throat, to begin. 

 

She starts moving quicker, harder, rougher, stroking and pushing and  _ sliding _ , as Nicole goes firmly to pieces below her. 

 

She’s got too many clothes on, there’s not enough of her skin against Nicole’s, so she slides one hand behind her own back, popping her bra off before she tosses it to the side, moaning at the lack of pressure against her core when she takes one hand away to slip free from black lace. 

 

The groan that comes loose when she makes contact again shakes them both, and it’s then that Nicole’s hands tighten firmer over her sides before her eyes look up from where Waverly’s hand is disappearing, begging her for something she can’t verbalise just yet. 

 

Nicole finds her words soon enough, though, as her eyes shift, transfixed between Waverly’s hand and her gaze, coming out in a gasp. 

 

“I want to….” she trails off, licking her lips, her eyes dropping to Waverly’s breasts. “Baby, I want to….”

 

“You can do anything but touch me  _ there _ ,” Waverly smirks down at Nicole as she grinds her hips down against Nicole’s, bumping her hand against Nicole’s lower stomach in a clear act of enticement. “I want to wait for  _ that _ ….I want to make us  _ both _ wait.”

 

She knows neither of them will be waiting long, but that’s not the point. She wants to pique Nicole’s anticipation as much as her own, so when Nicole does finally touch her, she  _ falls _ , and drives the darkness clean from her lungs for a little while, at least. 

 

Nicole moves for her at once, her hands sliding up Waverly’s sides to cup her breasts before she pulls Waverly to her mouth, covering Waverly’s nipple with a hot, eager mouth, and Waverly’s breath stops,  _ hard _ . 

 

The redhead looks up to Waverly, holding her eye contact as she leans against Waverly’s chest. She dips her head and takes one of Waverly’s nipples between her teeth, tugging it gently before it slips from them and Waverly  _ groans _ . 

 

She takes one long look at Waverly’s hand, moving quicker and quicker now, before she takes Waverly’s other breast in her mouth, too. 

 

It knocks Waverly’s concentration, and she won’t have that, she won’t have Nicole with the upper hand, so she rises up off Nicole’s lap so she can reposition her hand, and Nicole stops her movement at once, because she knows exactly what Waverly is about to do. 

 

Waverly leans in, kissing Nicole  _ hard _ before leaning back, bringing her hips forward and sinking down on her own fingers, so slowly she can feel the clock on the sideboard click faster than her heartbeat. 

 

“ _ Waverly _ ,” Nicole moans roughly, watching intensely as Waverly starts to roll her hips up and off her fingers before dropping down again, and Waverly’s not actually sure if Nicole’s still breathing, or whether she’s breathing for the both of them. 

 

She’s close to breaking now, they both are, and the desire to have Nicole touch her is starting to overtake everything else. Nicole must recognise the snap coming, too, because she readies her own body, draws strength in her thighs, so the moment Waverly sighs  _ I’m yours _ , Nicole  _ moves _ . 

 

She turns them smoothly, rolling Waverly onto her back before she gives Waverly one last long lustful look, and then  _ devours _ her. 

  
  


-

  
  


Sometime around the turn of the season between winter and spring, Waverly feels a change, she feels a  _ shift  _ in the darkness, and she doesn’t know what it means until it’s too late. 

 

The darkness senses an end, she knows it does, because Waverly’s heart has been lightening, steadily lightening, but all of a sudden the shadows turn thick and sweet and cloying, and Waverly  _ goes under.  _

  
  


-

  
  


She fights and fights and fights, but it’s no good. 

 

The darkness  _ wins _ .

 

The amount of willpower she’s exerting to keep the light afloat takes too much of a toll on her body, it’s unsustainable, she knew it was, she just thought it would be enough,  _ just _ enough to get her to the end. 

 

The darkness wins, after a long and painful fight. 

 

And she  _ sleeps _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


In her sleep, she dreams. 

 

Some beautiful and some terrible, but in all, she is only the light. 

 

Her darkness is gone, save one small speck she can feel against her heart like sand in her shoe, and for the first time in what feels like years, she is free. 

 

The dreams are strange, nonsensical, very rarely normal. They show her futures that will never be futures, and pasts that were never pasts, and things she knows will never unfold into reality. 

 

Except for one, where she marries Nicole under a full moon and they live, with gold and diamond on their fingers, they  _ live _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


In some dreams, she and Nicole are together. 

 

Only it’s not her, it’s the  _ other _ her. 

 

It’s different, though. The other her is her, but it’s not, too. It’s not connected to her as thickly as it normally is. It’s another character in this pantomime she’s dancing, and not another part of her heart. 

 

The grain of sand stirs, though, recognising some kinship in this shadow, and Waverly tries to stop them coming together, she and Nicole, but it’s fruitless. 

 

Their lips meet, and Waverly can only watch. 

 

The worst part is that she doesn’t even mind looking on, because the darker her, she and Nicole are  _ beautiful _ together. 

 

They live without obligation and expectation and come together freer without the light holding them back. 

 

((And in reality, Waverly knows Nicole would never allow this, a change, a permanent change like this, it’s too much. Even for her. Even with  _ all _ her love, it’s too much.))

 

It’s beautiful and horrifying, but she can’t take her eyes away because it’s so compelling. She screams and screams and  _ screams  _ for Nicole to  _ stop, Nicole, stop _ . 

 

But it doesn’t. 

  
  


-

  
  


She’s aware at some stage of people around her, moving around the edges of her comatose state, but she can’t quite reach them. Not yet. 

 

She can feel Nicole only a heart’s length away at her side, always at her side, but she cannot instruct her hand to move and take Nicole’s own. 

 

Other people come, too, their presence appearing in her dreams. 

 

Jeremy takes blood in one, and uses it to build a world ending machine. Doc mutters incantations with a smoking bundle of sage in another, in a language even  _ she _ doesn’t understand. Wynonna cries in some, too. She cries and cries and cries, and it breaks Waverly’s heart into more pieces than giving away her niece did. 

 

So does Nicole. 

 

Nicole is there in every dream, sobbing in some, and alight with pain the next, and distantly the part of Waverly’s still conscious, but removed, mind suspects it’s because she hasn’t left. Not once has she moved from Waverly’s side. 

 

She stays and stays and  _ stays, _ and that helps keep Waverly’s panic in check, when she has small moments of lucidity and she knows that she’s trapped in a prison of her own making. 

 

It helps her stay  _ calm _ . 

 

And she thinks, after a while, that it helps with her control, too. 

 

Because she dreams for what feels like  _ weeks _ without twitching a muscle and then, all of a sudden, she feels Nicole’s hand move next to her own, and without conscious thought, as she has done a thousand times before, she takes Nicole’s in her own. 

 

Their skin touches and all of a sudden, like a hot knife through ice, the glamour falls, and she can  _ see _ . 

  
  


-

  
  


“ _ Wynonna _ .”

 

Nicole’s panicked voice cuts through the haze before any others. 

 

“Wynonna, she’s awake. I think she’s awake.”

 

She feels sick and groggy and she tries to sit up, but she faints almost immediately. She’s not asleep for long this time, though, thank god, coming to again slower to a room she recognises as her own. 

 

“Easy, baby,” Waverly hears Nicole breathe quietly, her hands soft on Waverly’s shoulders when her eyes flutter open. “Take it easy, okay.”

 

Nicole is on her knees at Waverly’s side, and Wynonna is standing at the foot of her bed, clutching Doc’s hand desperately as her eyes drink in the sight of Waverly, awake. 

 

It’s dark in her room, the space lit with small candles, and Waverly thinks she can see runes of some kind drawn on the walls, too, a protection spell, she recognises as her sleep-addled brain tries to catch up. 

 

She feels terrible, and her skin is on fire, but she’s awake. She’s awake, and she knows it’s because of….

 

Nicole. It’s because of  _ Nicole _ . 

 

She turns her head before she does anything else, says anything else, because she needs to make sure that this is true. That this isn’t just some more elaborate trick of her exhausted mind. 

 

“You’re real?” Waverly asks, reaching to place her hand on Nicole’s cheek. “This isn’t still a….”

 

“You’re awake, baby,” Nicole replies, and her voice  _ cracks _ . “You’re awake.”

 

She sighs in relief and feels a dam crack next to her heart, and Nicole leans in to press a feather light kiss on her brow, her hands tightening over Waverly’s own as firmly as she thinks Waverly can take. 

 

She cries. The dam breaks, and Nicole is here—she’s real—so Waverly cries. She’s exhausted, but she pulls Nicole to her with all the strength she can muster, clawing her nails into Nicole’s back just to make sure. 

 

“It’s ok, baby,” Nicole soothes as her hand strokes the nape of her neck. “It’s ok. You’re ok. Everything’s going to be fine.”

 

“Hell of a scare you gave us, baby girl,” Wynonna says, wiping her cheek free of a tear as Doc does the same. “Don’t you ever do that to us again, you hear me?”

 

“How long have I been asleep for?” Waverly asks quietly, her hand folding in Nicole’s as Nicole helps her sit up. 

 

“A month,” Nicole says softly at her side, her hands rubbing Waverly’s back to calm her. “You’ve been asleep for a month, Wave.”

 

She feels her heart stop cold. 

 

A  _ month _ . She’s been asleep a  _ month _ ?

 

She looks to Nicole with fresh tears in her eyes and fear in her palms, because a _month_ , it’s been _a_ _month_. 

 

“It’s okay,”  Nicole offers, her face softening in a way that eases Waverly’s heart, too. “Baby, it’s ok. I know that’s a long time, but it’s okay. We’ve been here the whole time and it’s alright, you’re ok now.”

 

The panic recedes a little, her ribs ease, and she takes a breath as she looks to Nicole. Her home. Nicole. 

 

“What happened?” Wynonna asks, taking a seat by Waverly’s feet, and Waverly sighs at the feeling of having her close, almost as effective a balm as Nicole’s. “What made you wake up, kid? Did something happen? Did something bring you out?”

 

She knows it’s not this simple, but it is at the same time. 

 

It was Nicole. Her white light. Her sun.

 

_ It was Nicole. _

 

There are a thousand mechanics she needs to explain, things she needs to do to make sure this doesn’t ever happen again, but none of those are more important than her family by her side and her love in her bed. 

 

“Nicole,” Waverly says with a quiet powerful enough to wake the dead as she turns to her heart in human form, and when the words come out, they’re a promise and a proposal and so much more than just her name. 

 

Because she remembers a dream with the moon as bright as the sun, and Nicole standing below it as her  _ wife _ , and now that she is awake, she knows it wasn’t a dream at all. 

 

Not that one. 

 

It was a  _ premonition _ . 

 

Her voice is simple and soft, and it’s a question, too.  _ Will you spend the rest of your life with me, _ written in invisible lines by her breath on Nicole’s cheeks. 

 

“It was  _ Nicole _ .”

  
  


-

  
  


**End** . 

  
  


-

**Author's Note:**

> I know that was a little different, but what did you think? 
> 
> Come pop by my [tumblr](http://tigerlo.tumblr.com) if you fancy, there are a few little wayhaught drabbles there that I haven't posted here, if that's something that interests you!
> 
> x


End file.
